What’s happening with the Syrian refugees Australia agreed to take?

In September last year the federal government committed to taking a once off tranche of 12,000 refugees from Syria in addition to the 13,750 people who would be granted humanitarian visas each year. So what’s been happening? I wrote to the Department and they replied informing me that the government had set itself a timeframe of delivering all 12,000 places within two years (which I assume means by September 2017) and is on progress to reach that goal.

1. Over 6000 people have been interviewed and assessed as meeting threshold requirements for a Visa and are awaiting the outcomes of health, character and/or security checks;
2. as at July 15 2016 over 4300 people have been granted visas towards the 12,000 places. Of these 1002 have already settled in Australia;

It’s worth noting that alongside this the government is increasing the size of the regular humanitarian program to 16,250 places in 2017-18 and 18,750 places in 2018-19.

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